Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2008 10:37 AM
Subject: Toward an American Revolution
http://cyberjournal.org/cj/authors/fresia/
Toward an American Revolution
Exposing the Constitution
and other Illusions
Jerry Fresia
Copyright © 1988 by Jerry Fresia
http://cyberjournal.org/cj/authors/fresia/
Brian Price, an American historian who has spent countless hours studying
early American elites' rise to power, asks a similar question: “Is it possible
for a class which exterminates the native peoples of the Americas, replaces
them by raping Africa for humans it then denigrates and dehumanizes as slaves,
while cheapening and degrading its own working class - is it possible for such
a class to create democracy, equality, and to advance the cause of human
freedom?” The implicit answer is, “No. Of course not.”
Consider certain features of the lives of three men. The first was a very
wealthy man. In l787, many considered him the richest man in all the thirteen
states. His will of l789 revealed that he owned 35,000 acres in Virginia and
1,119 acres in Maryland. He owned property in Washington valued (in l799
dollars) at $l9,132, in Alexandria at $4,000, in Winchester at $400, and in
Bath at $800. He also held $6,246 worth of U.S. securities, $10,666 worth of
shares in the James River Company, $6,800 worth of stock in the Bank of
Columbia, and $1,000 worth of stock in the Bank of Alexandria. His livestock
was valued at $15,653. As early as 1773, he had enslaved 216 human beings who
were not emancipated until after he and his wife had both died.2
The second man was a lawyer. He often expressed his admiration of
monarchy and, correspondingly, his disdain and contempt for common people. His
political attitudes were made clear following an incident which occurred in
Boston on March 5, 1770. On that day, a number of ropemakers got into an
argument with British soldiers whose occupation of Boston had threatened the
ropemakers' jobs. A fight broke out and an angry crowd developed. The British
soldiers responded by firing into the crowd, killing several. The event has
since become known as the Boston Massacre. The soldiers involved in the
shooting were later acquitted thanks, in part, to the skills of the lawyer we
have been describing, who was selected as the defense attorney for the British.
He described the crowd as “a motley rabble of saucy boys, negroes, and
molattoes, Irish teagues and outlandish jack tarrs.”3
The life of the third man was more complex, more filled with
contradiction than the other two. He was wealthy. He owned over 10,000 acres
and by 1809 he had enslaved 185 human beings. States one biographer, “He lived
with the grace and elegance of many British lords; his house slaves alone
numbered twenty-five.” Yet slavery caused him great anxiety; he seems to have
sincerely desired the abolition of slavery but was utterly incapable of acting
in a way which was consistent with his abolitionist sympathies. He gave his
daughter twenty-five slaves as a wedding present, for example. And when
confronted with his indebtedness of $107,000 at the end of his life in 1826, he
noted that at least his slaves constituted liquid capital. He had several
children by one of his slaves and thus found himself in the position of having
to face public ridicule or keep up the elaborate pretense that his slave
children did not exist. He chose the latter course and arranged, discreetly, to
have them “run away.”4
Who are these three men? We know them well. They are among our “Founding
Fathers,” or Framers as we shall call them. They are the first three presidents
of the United States, George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson.
The brief sketches of these men are but glimpses into their personal
lives, but some of the details are significantly revealing. They suggest that
the Framers, far from champions of the people, were rich and powerful men who
sought to maintain their wealth and status by figuring out ways to keep common
people down. Moreover, I shall present additional evidence about the lives of
the Framers, the Constitution, and the period in which it was written which
supports the contention that the Framers were profoundly anti-democratic and
afraid of the people. Some of the information may be surprising. In 1782, for
example, Superintendent of Finance Robert Morris believed that a stronger
central government was needed to “restrain the democratic spirit” in the
states. Eric Foner tells us that Morris's private correspondence reveals “only
contempt for the common people.” 5 Benjamin Rush, “the distinguished scientist
and physician” from Philadelphia and Framer (although he was not at the
Constitutional Convention), would often refer to common people as “scum.”
Alexander Hamilton called the people “a great beast.”6 Not all the Framers
resorted to name calling, but it is clear that they feared and distrusted the
political participation of common people. Perhaps even more shocking than the
personal opinions of the Framers, is the process by which the Constitution was
ratified. As described in more detail in Chapter 3, secrecy, deceit and even
violence played key roles in the Constitution's passage. These unsavory tactics
were used by the Framers and their allies because the majority of the people
were against the ratification of the Constitution. What is striking about this
historical fact is its similarity with public policy and elite decision-making
today. At times, the interests of elites and the public interest coincides.
When it does not, however, elites tend to go ahead anyway. And because so much
of what corporate-government elites believe to be in the national interest
violates accepted standards of decency, many public policies are formulated and
carried out covertly. But the point here is that covert and anti-democratic
measures are not new developments. They have been the method of guaranteeing
class rule ever since the Framers decided that they needed the present
political system to protect their power and privilege.
It is contrary to everything we've been taught about the Framers to hear
that they felt contempt for common people and that their Constitutional
Convention was profoundly undemocratic. Indeed such accusations sound even less
familiar in the context of the late 1980s when celebrations of the
Constitution's bicentennial have brought adulation of this country's political
origins to new and even more mindless heights. In its issue celebrating the
bicentennial, Newsweek gushed, “The educated men in post-Revolutionary
America,” (and one must presume that this includes the Framers), “embraced the
political tradition of participatory democracy, the social pretense of virtual
classlessness and the economic fact of absolute equality of opportunity.” 7 The
“Founding Fathers” are always the champions of freedom, justice, and democracy.
“Reverence is due to those men...,” states Time magazine in its special
bicentennial issue. 8
Books and celebrity television specials packed with familiar myths and
illusions have been churned out by the dozens. The Constitution itself is “the
greatest single document struck off by the hand and mind of man” we are told by
the the Commission on the Bicentennial of the the U.S. Constitution. Thus on
the 200th anniversary of the completion of the Constitution, former chief
justice Warren Burger, on national TV, led the nation's school children and
teachers in a recitation of the Preamble (“We the people...”) and President
Reagan led the country in a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. One of the
many books honoring our Constitution, We The People by Peter Spier, begins by
stating that the “U.S. Constitution is the oldest and most significant written
document of our history.” He goes on to say that the Constitution “has come to
symbolize freedom, justice, equality, and hope for American citizens as
individuals and as a collective, democratic nation. For two hundred years the
Constitution has provided its people with rights, liberties, and a free society
that people of other nations can only dream of.” How familiar Spier's words
sound to those of us who have grown up in the United States. From our earliest
days we are taught to glorify the Framers and the great American “democracy”
that is their legacy. Even as adults we are still expected to accept the same
grade-school, cartoon-like version of our founding..
As citizens we are supposed to be like the nation's school children who
are given no choice but to stand by their desks and mindlessly recite a pledge
of allegiance to a flag, a pledge that was introduced into schools at the turn
of the century to counter the influence of ideas that immigrant school children
had received from their parents and from distant lands. The fundamental purpose
of bicentennial ideology, then, is to encourage us not to explore competing
ways of thinking or to ask hard questions about our heritage. We are not
encouraged to think because it is understood that thinking sometimes leads to
disagreement, or worse, to the challenging of some sacred text. Instead we are
encouraged to believe. Efforts to transform thinking citizens into believing
citizens, we should point out, really began at just about the time that the
Framers were planning the Constitutional Convention. Disturbing symptoms that
common people were ignoring customs of social deference and were beginning to
think for themselves led some Framers such as John Dickinson to urge that
political instruments be devised to protect “the worthy against the
licentious.” Benjamin Rush, in a proposal entitled “The Mode of Education
Proper in a Republic,” stated: “I consider it possible to convert men into
republican machines. This must be done, if we expect them to perform their
parts properly, in the great machine of the government of the state.” And so it
must be done today, if people are to “perform their parts properly.” The aim of
the ideological manager is, in effect, the creation of millions of “republican
machines.”9
Common sense tells us that people who spend a good deal of time either
acquiring or protecting a vast personal empire or defending a king's soldiers
against the dispossessed would also have believed that the possession of
enormous privilege was just and that protection of that privilege ought to be
sought and maintained at considerable cost. Common sense should further compel
us to wonder whether such people could write a constitution that would
effectively transfer power from their few hands into the hands of the many,
that is, into the hands of the poor, the debtors and people without property.
Brian Price, an American historian who has spent countless hours studying early
American elites' rise to power, asks a similar question: “Is it possible for a
class which exterminates the native peoples of the Americas, replaces them by
raping Africa for humans it then denigrates and dehumanizes as slaves, while
cheapening and degrading its own working class - is it possible for such a
class to create democracy, equality, and to advance the cause of human
freedom?” The implicit answer is, “No. Of course not.”
http://cyberjournal.org/cj/authors/fresia/
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